FT?

The Financial Times, no less.

SEARCHING FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (14); Re: "Some Catholics in a second marriage for example will be disappointed that the recent Synod of Bishops did not ask the Holy Father to allow such people to receive Holy Communion"; Pastoral Letter for the First Sunday of Lent, 2016

• This expedited post is another that is not part of our ongoing sub-series (Link 1, Link 2) concentrating on the issue of His Grace and the matter of women priests, the next part of 

which (note for our monitors' attention) will appear this week.

It was just one letter (Link), with only eight paragraphs and barely over 1000 words.

Yet it served as a perfect microcosmic example of the concerns and the conundrum – perceived by a fair few in this territory – surrounding His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP, ninth Archbishop of Liverpool, about where he truly stands in regards to the Church's tradition and teaching.

Basically, it managed to both please and disturb at the same time.

In anticipation of any accusation that, in stating the above, we have evidently missed the point of the letter – "Whoosh! It was all about mercy but that obviously sailed right over your heads" – well, we really haven't (but we'll make a very necessary point about the overladen emphasis on mercy – and mercy alone – later in this post, just to provide some perspective).

SEARCHING FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (7) - Re: One Year Ago This Week; episcopal welcome to the Archdiocese for the dissenting ACTA group; call to find "new pathways to dialogue"; limited remarks only; Notes #7

A timely reminder that exactly one year ago to the week, this happened (all in bold below we quote directly from the ACTA - A Call to Action website). We would make one remark at this juncture (n.b. ahead of a very busy post-Synodal autumn in this Archdiocese): it's Gospel.

Eight Months into 2015 – State of the Disunion Address; Re (amongst other things): attitudes towards abuses of the Blessed Sacrament; and broader matters "in light of recent events"

If we're correct in assuming that our local Ordinary – His Grace, the Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP – was fully consulted about (as he should have been) and then approved the recently televised, radio-broadcasted and cyber-relayed liturgical scandals, Eucharistic abuses and sacrileges that occurred in these parts, all of which can objectively be proven by video evidence, then it's perhaps appropriate to now revisit footage of another event held earlier this year.

We refer to the publicly available recording of a gathering, as publicised in early summer on Liverpolitanus, which had been held in February 2015 far from this archdiocese. On the west coast of the USA, in fact. We chose not to comment fully about the footage at that time. Rather, we felt that the actions purposefully caught on camera – indeed promoted on YouTube for worldwide witness, no less, presumably with some intent towards "evangelisation" – were best left to speak for themselves.

For a while.

SEARCHING FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (4) - Re: "I would like to see it developed"; BBC Radio 4 interview, May 4th, 2014, with Edward Stourton; fuller transcript, without additional commentary: Notes #4

Three days after his enthronement as Archbishop of Liverpool, in May 2014, His Grace, the Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon, was interviewed by the broadcaster and journalist, Edward Stourton, a known Catholic progressive. Amongst other things, the pair spoke about the, then forthcoming, Synod on the Family due to take place at the Vatican in October 2014 and their expectations of the event. Stourton exhibited a received knowledge that His Grace had already expressed a view that he was "expecting great things" from the Synod. This undoubtedly referred to an interview His Grace had given, whilst he was still Archbishop-designate of Liverpool, several weeks earlier, to the liberal, London-based, weekly Catholic news magazine, The Tablet, of which Stourton is a trustee. The Archbishop did not challenge Stourton's assertion regarding the attributable "expecting great things" quote. The blog The Sensible Bond, provided a good commentary at the time on certain salient extracts from His Grace's interview with Stourton and for good measure offered some (admittedly unsupportable) insights into what may have been the background process behind the appointment of His Grace as the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool.

At time of writing, the interview is still available on BBC iPlayer: 

His Grace features from 36 mins 25 seconds.

Without further commentary from Liverpolitanus, we provide a fuller transcript of the discussion as it pertains to Church matters (part of the conversation referring to the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster, and the ongoing inquests into the same, has not been included).